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From : 'Yes to life' by Victor Frankl
It is not only through our actions that we can give life meaning — insofar as we can answer life’s specific questions responsibly — we can fulfill the demands of existence not only as active agents but also as loving human beings: in our loving dedication to the beautiful, the great, the good.
Should I perhaps try to explain for you with some hackneyed phrase how and
why experiencing beauty can make life meaningful? I prefer to confine myself to
the following thought experiment: imagine that you are sitting in a concert
hall and listening to your favorite symphony, and your favorite bars of the
symphony resound in your ears, and you are so moved by the music that it sends
shivers down your spine; and now imagine that it would be possible (something
that is psychologically so impossible) for someone to ask you in this moment
whether your life has meaning. I believe you would agree with me if I declared
that in this case you would only be able to give one answer, and it would go
something like: “It would have been worth it to have lived for this moment
alone!
Those who experience, not the arts, but nature, may have a
similar response, and also those who experience another human being. Do we not
know the feeling that overtakes us when we are in the presence of a particular
person and, roughly translates as, The fact that this person exists in the
world at all, this alone makes this world, and a life in it, meaningful.
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